Family engagement is a shared responsibility among families, educators, and communities to support children's learning and development. For families, it is about the knowledge, attitudes, values, and behaviors that enable children to be motivated, enthusiastic, and successful learners. For libraries, this means having respectful partnerships with…

First-generation college students have a profound impact both inside and outside the classroom on the strategic goals of universities, yet in-depth, firsthand information about their experiences are difficult for researchers and university administrators to find. Oral histories are a data-rich method of collecting narratives that legitimize the…

In many schools, librarians play a key role in teaching information literacy and inquiry learning. From a survey of Colorado librarians, Keith Curry Lance and Leslie Maniotes learned that librarians who regularly facilitated student-led inquiry activities were also more likely to teach regularly a number of information literacy skills. Librarians…

This article describes the author's (an elementary school librarian) journey as she researched various bike bookmobile programs in the United States. Though the three programs had different target audiences, all the bike bookmobiles that she observed generated excitement and interest in reading. Public interest for each program was high. People…

In the spring of 2011, the Penrose Library at the University of Denver began the process of storing all materials, services, and staff to temporary locations in preparation for a building renovation project. The library was faced with the challenge of delivering all materials from an off-site storage facility within two hours of request. A new…

Developing collection-level surveys to expose hidden collections in special collections and archives departments within ARL libraries has received a great deal of scholarly attention in the recent years. Numerous standards have been explored, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. This paper summarizes some of the major initiatives in…

In this article St. Vrain Valley (CO) School District (SVVSD) librarian, Holli Buchter describes what took place in the school libraries in the district when the newest elementary school, Red Hawk, opened its doors. Red Hawk asked and answered the question: "Is the Dewey Decimal Classification system still the best way for students to locate…

The Friends of the Pikes Peak Library District (PPLD) had a legacy website that was remotely hosted and maintained by a volunteer. They wanted a more significant presence on PPLD.org and an easier interface with which to update information. The developers decided to create a new Friends site in Drupal, using RWD, CSS3, and HTML5. The plan was to…

More than 60,000 students attend over seventy schools comprising the Douglas County School District (DCSD) in Colorado. It has been a consistently high-performing district, with a reputation for being among Colorado's elite. Douglas County Libraries (DCL) is a nationally recognized state-of-the-art public library system with seven branches serving…

This article features Naturita Community Library (NCL), winner of "LJ"'s 2011 Best Small Library in America Award, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The library is the largest straw bale library in America. It sits on the western slope of the Rockies, across the Uncompahgre Plateau from the county seat in Montrose,…

Colorado school librarians are in the midst of a crisis. According to a 2009-2010 survey of public schools in Colorado, just 23% of elementary schools have an endorsed librarian, while 37% of middle schools and 32% of high schools report having an endorsed librarian. This report also shows how these percentages have dropped in just a two-year…

Beyond the sprawling Denver International Airport, there's little to put Adams County, Colorado, on the map. The region's light rail only stretches south, so Adams County, a mostly working-class zone to the northeast, has come late to growth. There's no central city; the community is dominated by strip malls, big-box stores, and new developments.…

The development of education libraries cannot be understood outside the context of education history. Changes in educational practices and technology spurred three phases of development in the history of education libraries. Early examples, often called curriculum laboratories, developed as spaces to create educational materials where limited…

At least since the early 1990s, academic libraries have been merging Circulation and various other related functions into a single department typically labeled "Access Services." In many cases, however, that merger has proven to be administrative rather than functional, with minimal integration of common workflows. This article describes…

With many cities showing an interest in afterschool system building and research providing a growing body of useful information, this Wallace Perspective offers a digest of the latest thinking on how to build and sustain an afterschool system, and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for this promising work. The report (a follow-up to a…